"She only wants half a piece of cake."
Translation:她只要半块蛋糕。
24 CommentsThis discussion is locked.
Well, then, we have a real conundrum. A piece is a piece, whatever the size. Cut it in half and you have two whole pieces. Then what?
Hahaha good point. However, I think what they were trying to say is "half a slice". (If the cake has already been sliced to slices, and you want just half a slice)
So you slice yourself a slice that's half as large as the original slice? I'm not sure that solves the problem...
But I'm just fooling around.
I would argue that here "piece" should be a "serving". So you could have a piece worth two servings, or just half of one serving. At least, that's how it works in Spain.
It's better, I think, but technically it pretty much suffers from the same problem.
I think we could use the qualifier "regular" — "a regular serving", "a regular(-sized) piece", etc. — and then say that she wants half of that, though it would require the speaker and the listener to have a shared understanding of what a regular serving/piece was.
But in context, perhaps either "piece" or "serving" on its own could be understood to mean the "regular" version of either of those.
"想" has to be followed by a verb to mean "to want (to)". In front of a noun it doesn't mean "to want" in the English sense of "to be thinking of having". Instead it means "to miss (someone or something)", "to think up (an idea)", etc. Your sentence makes it sound as though she misses the cake.
Yes, but "我只想要" sounds a little awkward to me. (I'm not sure tho, maybe a native speaker can comment on this?)
KX3 is a native speaker. I imagine you'll get your wish. (Sounds okay to me though.)
58
It is not as common but still colloquial. I was just a little surprised it wasn't used at all here, but then again their conception of 想、很、要 and such is a little different from what is normal for me and a others here.
- 105
2020.8.12
If you only use 想 without a verb following it, it means "to think, consider" and not "to want, want to"
蛋 (dàn) = egg/oval-shaped thing
糕 (gāo) = cake
蛋糕 (dàngāo) = cake
Two version of kuài that we learned:
快 (kuài) = rapid/quick/speed
块 (kuài) = chunk/piece/classifier for cloth, cake, soap/classifier for money
- 58
No, you can say 她只要那块蛋糕的一半。 if you want to use 一半 and it would translate as something like "...half a piece of that cake".
- 105
2021.03.31
That is because you have no 要。You said "She only thinks/ponders/supposes about half a piece of cake."
It should be
只想要 or
只要 (the Duo's answer here)
It's not wrong, but I believe most Chinese speakers would dispense with the "一", at least in this particular context.